[MUD-Dev2] [BIZ] Project Darkstar - my take on it

[Bristle]

I am sure that Project Darkstar based on Sun's game platform has been
discussed before.  My interest of course is in the license of the
technology.
 
First, we need to end custom server development, at least at the core
level. The other day I briefly looked at several game emulator projects
- and each one was working on their own server. Unless the work is to
enhance someone's resume its time to reduce the number of server
variations that end up 75% complete.
 
I have found several alternatives over the years and when Sun announced
that game server, I had hoped that could be the solution to the platform
issue. Well today I found my copy of the platform still all neatly
zipped and I wondered why I didn't really look at it.
 
Turns out it is the license.  The best I have been able to find is
180-day non-commercial license. That must be a learning edition because
who is going to put in 6 months into a project that has to end.
 
I also found a reference to a developer's edition that is a single
computer 50 people limit.  I don't know the details of that and maybe
that is what I have on my computer but I didn't see a copy of the
license in my distribution so I wont touch it. I can understand the 50
user limit, but don't understand the single-machine limitation and you
can't copy the software to run more than one machine.
 
ok someone is going to ask - why do I want to run a game platform on
more than one machine when today's cpu is fast enough to handle more
than 100 zone servers?  Major reason is fault tolerance. You can't have
5 9s reliability with one computer. blow one power supply and see how
quickly the reliability number drops. With multiple computers and fault
tolerance you can bump up the reliability.
 
The second part is performance. I leave this part as a exercise for
someone else. And finally, the evolution to P2P network with the key
ideas of area of interest and the use of some sort of proximity servers
and some distributed hash table (DHT) mumble jumbo.
 
If Darkstar is not the right platform for us low-budget, no-budget
operators, then what is - i mean something that is not 5 - never years
away?